Tag: pasta

The small things

Tonight I’m back home at 21:30, that’s the earliest I got home in quite some time. Though it’s only Wednesday our fridge is almost empty already: obviously I didn’t shop enough this weekend in the countryside. Yet I have a last one of these late summer giant and very ripe tomatoes, so I decided to make some tagliatelle with a tomato base sauce, shimeji and sage. And because it is early and A. won’t be back until the usual 22:00 I can work a few details: adding a carrot cut in small dice to the sauce to add more flavor, peeling the tomato to only have the creamy and juicy parts, cooking at low heat for a longer time to get the sage to perfume the sauce more profoundly. All these small things that I have a tendency to skip and that actually are important to obtain a better result in the plate and for the palate…

The little cubes of carrots and the mushrooms and the sage goes very well together I find. But to eat them with pasta I also find that the carrots shouldn’t take the first place, and therefore should be cut in tiny cubes. The sage thinly cut add a nice touch, but is better when the vegetables are slowly cooked until they almost caramelized, and then are deglazed in the final stage with a fragrant olive oil. Regarding tomato, there is indeed nothing more annoying than cooking tomatoes and ending up with small rolls of skin half attached or floating in a tomato sauce in particular. And tonight peeling the tomato had the bitter taste of sadness because I got used to do it while I was cooking with my friend K. when we visited her and her husband in the Tsunan mountains in Niigata, and this morning we just learned that S. has past…

Butternut squash week day 1

Let’s start this week with a very easy and stunning butternut squash recipe that takes only 12min to make if you use already made pasta. If you want to roll your pasta, depending on how quick you are add that time too. I chose spaghetti for that recipe because I wanted al dente pasta rather than too soft pasta like tagliatelle or parpadelle. I am also inclined to think that long pasta brings a better balance…

Butternut squash and hazelnut pasta (2 servings)

– 120g of long pasta (spaghetti…)

– 120g-150g of butternut squash pealed

– a handful of hazelnuts

– olive oil

– salt and pepper

In a small pan boil some water and boil the pealed butternut cut in large chunks under cover until soft. In the mean time boil a large pan of water for the pasta and start boiling the pasta. In a small frypan roast the hazelnuts. When the butternut is soft, remove the water and with a wooden spoon, spatula or a fork purée the butternut squash, add olive oil, salt and pepper. By then the hazelnuts should be roasted, crunch roughly in a mortar with a pestle. Add half of the hazelnuts to the butternut squash purée. Keep the rest for plating. When the pasta are cooked al dente, drain. In the plates, serve the butternut squash purée, add the pasta on top, a but of olive oil, salt and pepper and then top with some hazelnuts. Enjoy right away!

Butternut squash love

Since the very first I saw this season I have bought butternut squash every week and I am not yet tired of it. Whether it is with Japanese rice, risotto, faro, pasta or quinoa, it is always great. In jumbo ravioli also it is perfect. I love the taste and the texture and I love it because it cooks super quickly, it keeps quite long even after cut open. It is the perfect ingredient for me this week since A. is away on business and I cook only for myself. Oh! And I was forgetting that it suits very well melty cheese be it cheddar, Parmigiano or gruyère.

So I’ve tried faro risotto style pure and simple. Topped with plenty of grated red cheddar. For that I first boiled the faro a bit before cooking the butternut squash in olive oil and added the faro.

I did tagliatelle with butternut squash, when it was really late and needed to eat quickly. For that I added the butternut squash cut in bites to the boiling water of the pasta 5min before they were supposed to be done. Topped with grated Parmigiano and a bit of olive oil.

And finally I added it to some quinoa soup, a recipe that over the years has been a classic of the chilly season. I just tossed the quinoa with a carrot, a piece of lotus root, chunks of butternut squash and winged beans in gently boiling water, in order of cooking time. Added some curcuma, salt and pepper and ate all warm.

There are still a few more recipes I want to try with butternut squash, but it will be next week until I buy a new one…

Winged beans

As I was explaining on IG yesterday, at the farmers market I found a new (to me) vegetable, it is green, fancy shaped and called 四角豆 shikakumame in Japanese. As it is a 豆 mame (bean) I figured I would like it, and after discussing with the farmer who told me it is easy as okra to prepare, I immediately put them in my basket. I wasn’t sure what to do with them but a quick browsing of the web inspired me. And rather than preparing something Asian style, which seems to be what it is mostly used in, I decided to go for something more western style: pasta with butternut squash and crispy bacon and the famous winged beans. That was simple and a great discovery! The winged beans taste like green beans but greener. And the wings are a bit like mushrooms in texture but green… I really loved them! I hope I’ll find more in the future!

Winged beans pasta (for 2people)

– 4 or 5 winged beans

– a piece of butternut squash

– 3 slices of bacon

– 120g of pasta

While boiling water for the pasta, cut the ban and grill it in a pan. Peel the butternut squash and cut in bites. Add to the bacon and cook at medium heat under cover. Wash the winged beans and cut them in bites. Add to the pan, and cook for 8min under cover while the pasta cook. After straining the pasta, add to the pan, stir well and serve. Add a bit of salt and pepper if you like.

PS: I had to remove the comments option from the page because it was trashed with spam… sorry… please use fb or ig or dm me!

Food in Tuscany

There is so much to say about it…

Food in Italy is always simple, fresh and great… I love to go shopping on the markets (there are markets pretty much everywhere) and find some local delish, I love to cook the simple fresh vegetables in season. My favorite Italian vegetables are zucchini, with the flower even better), fennel, artichokes, celery, radicchio, ceps and tomatoes. I love also the fresh pasta, the million varieties of cheeses and the prosciutto and the speck… but Italy is also great for herbs and dry fruits: pine nuts, hazelnuts, pistachios depending on the region. Pisa province is a region where pine nuts are produced and I couldn’t help but try them and bring some back to Japan! Recipes using them coming soon!

While in Italy I cooked a few different and very simple meals. I am a big fan of pesto soup and minestrone, so as soon as I can I usually cook one. In particular when the fresh beans are in season. It is really simple: celery, tomato, zucchini, fresh beans is the base, then add whatever: spinach, chard, carrot, onion… cook in salted water, serve with olive oil and grated Parmigiano. Enjoy warm or cold.

Fresh pasta are always good at least so much better than anything you can find elsewhere that there is no need to make tour own!! And stuffed pasta are always my favorite. Ricotta-spinach ravioli is on the top of the list, served with either a tomato sauce or chards and basil simply blanched and then cooked in olive oil with the ravioli. An other quick and delicious recipe!

When I have more time I like to prepare risotto with fresh and seasonal vegetables. Fennels that can hardly be found in Japan make a fresh risotto served with fennel flowers picked during a stroll in the garden. An onion to start with, plenty of olive oil, the perfect risotto rice, a large fennel, vegetable broth, and here is a beautiful risotto after 30 minutes!

Here it is for my selection of simple recipes for a little dinner fix in Italy!

Chickpea pasta

When we traveled to Australia last May, I’ve totally fallen in love with lentil pasta and chickpea pasta found in an organic vegan shop. I’m not particularly interested in gluten-free food but taste wise it was really very interesting. So I decided to try to make my own ones from chickpea flour. I knew it wouldn’t have the consistency of regular wheat pasta because it is gluten-free, so I was expecting something hard to roll, but in fact it wasn’t as bad as I imagined. I was first thinking of making farfalle, but I ran out of time, so I just rolled it manually and made some short tagliatelle. Again I new that long pasta wouldn’t hold together and that the pasta machine wouldn’t help here. The result was amazingly delicious. Probably even better with a stronger olive oil and cold. I served them with bacon, zucchini and mallow jute.

Definitely a recommendation and much easier to make than I thought!

Chickpea pasta

– 150g of chickpea flour, plus some for rolling

– water

In a bowl ready with the chickpea flour, a water little by little to obtain a nice mix, not too sticky. Set for rest for 1h.

Then knead a bit shain and on a floured top rolle the dough, cut the pasta.

Boil them and enjoy!!!

Goya chanpuru

In Okinawa cuisine they use a lot of pork meat and of goya, a bitter melon. Goya in Okinawa is delicious, but goya is a vegetable I never buy in Tokyo, because the ones you find in supermarkets are usually horribly bitter and hard (I did try a few times a long time ago…). There are a few tricks to remove the bitterness but normally you shouldn’t even need it… When someone give me one from their garden they are usually very delicious and not bitter at all, then I am more than happy to cook it. And one of the most classic recipe is goya chapuru ゴヤチャンプル. A traditional recipe from Okinawa with goya, tofu, pork meat and eggs. Sometimes moyashi (sprouted soya beans) are added… the pork meat is usually thin slices of pork belly or ribs, or in cheap version Spam. And it is seasoned with sesame oil usually but not always.

Since I received a beautiful goya And it’s been a really long time I haven’t I was really happy to cook it. With the heat and beautiful weather an Okinawa style preparation was perfectly adequate. Except that I didn’t have tofu and wanted some carbs to make the meal nourishing. I opted for a version of whole wheat penne with a goya, sausage and eggs preparation very similar to goya chanpuru. I used olive oil though rather than sesame oil. I simply cut the sausages in bites, grilled them in a frypan slightly greased, then added the goya, halved and sliced (and the seeds removed) and once they have soften with the heat I had 4 eggs beaten and stir regularly. I served it on top of the boiled penne and added olive oil, salt and pepper to finish.

Wafu pasta

The way of preparing pasta is unlimited and using Japanese ingredients with pasta may be really strange at first but it is not at all so strange in the end, it’s actually rather good. They are called wafu pasta (和風パスタ) and are actually quite common in Japan, they are regular pasta (most often spaghetti) with a dressing that uses Japanese typical ingredients such as meitaiko, nori… At first I didn’t like this mix too much, probably because it is often served in old not so nice cafe places, but I slowly got used to the idea and actually now enjoy preparing some.

I prepared a summer wafu pasta recipe with crushed edamame, jute mallow and tomatoes with olive oil. It is so simple but so fresh and summer like that I’m thinking I will prepare more wafu pasta in the future!

In the mean a typhoon is coming to Tokyo, keep dry and safe and have a nice weekend!

Malabar spinach

I discovered this green last year at our local market, called tsurumimurasaki ツルムラサキ in Japanese, and had a crush for it… then the season passed and it was the season for other greens… and then this week Malabar spinach was on the market shelves… and I was happy to find it again, with its very grassy taste its unique texture and its beautiful color. And again I have used it intensively in the past few days.

One of my two favorite ways of cooking it is by simply sautéed it. I realize that this is mainly how I like most of my vegetables: a fry pan, a drop of olive oil or nothing and the vegetables just washed (not even dried) and cooked in their water. Malabar spinach goes well with other vegetables, potatoes, kohlrabi, tomatoes… for this recipe it was simple, just red cabbage shaved and Malabar spinach cut in pieces, a bit of olive oil, and some farfalle. A but of pepper and a bit of salt. And it was an amazing dinner.

Do you cook Malabar spinach? How do you like them?

Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Baskerville 2 by Anders Noren.

Up ↑

Verified by MonsterInsights